-
HOME
-
WHAT IS STANDOur Mission Our Values Our Help Contact
-
WHAT WE FIGHT FORReligious Freedom Religious Literacy Equality & Human Rights Inclusion & Respect Free Speech Responsible Journalism Corporate Accountability
-
RESOURCESExpert Studies Landmark Decisions White Papers FAQs David Miscavige Religious Freedom Resource Center Freedom of Religion & Human Rights Topic Index Priest-Penitent Privilege Islamophobia
-
HATE MONITORBiased Media Propagandists Hatemongers False Experts Hate Monitor Blog
-
NEWSROOMNews Media Watch Videos Blog
-
TAKE ACTIONCombat Hate & Discrimination Champion Freedom of Religion Demand Accountability
The Great Replacement Theory: Hate Is Hate By Any Name
“[My goal is to] spread awareness to my fellow whites about the real problems the West is facing [and] encourage further attacks that will eventually start the war that will save the Western world.” – Buffalo, N.Y. shooter, suspected murderer of 10 people, May 14, 2022
“This crisis of mass immigration… is an assault on the European people that, if not combated, will ultimately result in the complete racial and cultural replacement of the European people.” – Christchurch, New Zealand murderer of at least 50, attempted murderer of 40 more, March 2019
“HIAS [Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society] likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered.” – Pittsburgh synagogue killer of 11, October 2018
“Jews will not replace us!” – White supremacist rallying cry, August 2017
What do these white supremacist rants, manifestos and screams have in common? The loony theory that somehow an increase of non-white people through immigration, procreation, miscegenation and other means will spell the downfall of Western culture and the white master race in particular.
“The Great Replacement Theory” as it has been dubbed is the flagship justification used by certain madmen to exclude, abuse, violate and murder Blacks, Muslims, Jews, immigrants and anyone they feel might sully the purity of white civilization.
The term is said to have originated with one Theodore G. Bilbo whose 1947 book, Separation or Mongrelization: Take Your Choice, laid out his rationale for shipping all Black people back to Africa. “The great civilizations of the ages have been produce[d] by the Caucasian race,” he wrote. “The mongrel not only lacks the ability to create a civilization, but he cannot maintain a culture that he finds around him,” he wrote. “A White America or a mongrel America—you must take your choice!”
The bigot in truth is a small, weak and terrified individual.
Bilbo’s bigoted bile notwithstanding, the “credit” for casting the first stone of the replacement ideology goes further back than 1947, way further back. And one must understand what a bigot is to understand what is at the heart of his ideology. The bigot is not a strong person though he may shout and flex his muscles. The bigot is not a brave person though he may pledge his lifeblood to his cause. The bigot in truth is a small, weak and terrified individual, who lives with a horror so deep and profound that it is hard for a rational person to conceive of it.
What is the racist—the hater—so frightened of? Men, women and children, mainly. They are frightened of ordinary people who happen to look different, possibly speak with a different accent, attend a different place of worship. For survival’s sake, that terror must be masked and hidden as the hater cannot be seen for the weakling he or she is. That weakness is hidden with rhetoric, with slogans, with manifestos and, to our profound misfortune, with bloodshed.
“The Great Replacement Theory” is simply another way to shout “n----r!” at a Black person or “K-ke!” to a Jew or “Ch-nk!” to a member of the AAPI community or any of the thousand epithets hurled through the ages to lump minority religions, ethnicities and lifestyles into labels of two syllables or less—the work and wisdom of conscientious, sincere and inspired civic or religious leaders, often spanning millennia of struggle and sacrifice, thereby reduced to the scope of a bumper sticker.
But the bigot, the hater, the racist, the antisemite, the Islamophobe, the anti-Scientologist, the xenophobe, the anti-Asian American and the rest all have one further thing in common: their stupidity. Refusing to learn the most elementary truths of humanity, they use a blindfold to shield themselves from the facts, and, groping in the dark, scream and lash out at imagined enemies.
So let’s not fool ourselves by attaching any shred of validity to their hate. Let’s not grant it even remotely civilized terms like “The Great Replacement Theory” or “white supremacy” or “neo-Nazism.”
Let’s do nothing but call it all exactly what it is: insanity. Violence and hate are not political, religious, philosophical, or ideological.
No.
They’re just insane.
